Southern California activists and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle were quick to weigh in Tuesday night on President Barack Obama’s somewhat scaled-back agenda for what he called a potentially “breakthrough year” in his State of the Union address.

With a deeply divided Congress in a contentious election year, the locals also sharply disagreed on how a range of proposals on several hot-button issues such as immigration and Obama’s economic ideas would affect the region’s residents.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said he was pleased Obama mentioned the issue of immigration reform and appropriately identified it as something related to the creation of greater economic opportunities.

“I’m encouraged by his statement with regard to economic opportunity programs that he would take action without legislation where possible and appropriate,” Saenz said. “I’m encouraged that may mean that the administration will take steps to ensure that people who are potentially eligible for legalization under the Senate Bill that passed last year are not deported.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, said immigration reform is the biggest legislative issue that’s likely to end an agreement in Congress this year and was glad the president reiterated its importance and his willingness to work with Congress to make it happen.

“I think we’re within striking distance and it would make a difference to millions of people in this country,” Schiff said.

But Ira Mehlman, media director of the Washington D.C.-based Federation for American Immigration Reform, argued that Obama’s calls for immigration reform are at odds with his calls for revitalizing the nation’s middle class.

“As long as you’re going to flood the labor market with lots and lots of new immigrants and reward people who broke our laws with amnesty, you’re going to make it impossible for the middle class to recoup lost wages and to get ahead,” said Mehlman, a former Venice resident.

As for Obama’s economic proposals, Gary Toebben, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said he liked the president’s focus on creating new jobs and hopes that California will be able to take advantage of one of the new manufacturing hubs the president mentioned in his speech. He also agreed with the importance of workforce training but thought the president was unnecessarily hard on fossil fuels.

“I understand the goal of reducing reliance on foreign oil, but I also think we have to be objective about the fact that fossil fuels built the industrial economy that we enjoy today and they’re going to be with us for quite a while,” Toebben said.

Maria Elena Durazo of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said she was encouraged that Obama maintained that he was going to continue to try to invest in good manufacturing jobs and reward companies that keep their jobs in this country. While Durazo said she is happy that Obama will be using his executive authority to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for those working on new federal service contracts, most of society is still dependent on Congress to pass a decent minimum wage.

“We’re going to do all we can at the local level, the state level and eventually at the federal level to give workers a raise,” she said.

Roxana Tynan of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy called the president’s remarks about increasing wages “critically important at a time when economic inequality is at record high.”

But far more needs to be done, she said.

“That’s why it’s essential for cities such as Los Angeles to support common-sense proposals like the one that would raise wages for hotel workers to $15 an hour,” she said. “Wages that truly lift workers out of poverty are good for the economy, which is why over 700 small businesses are supporting the hotel minimum wage proposal.”

Rep. Gary Miller, R-Rancho Cucamonga, said he agrees with the president’s intentions to expedite the nation’s economic recovery and restore jobs lost during the recession, but his personal focus remains on “real solutions to create jobs.”

In the 31st Congressional District, “unemployment still hovers near 10 percent,” Miller said. “This is unacceptable.”

Rather than waste time on proposals that divide us, he said, Congress should focus on “feasible, bipartisan solutions” that will provide job opportunities for hardworking Americans. With Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton, Miller said he introduced such a bill called the Revitalize Our Cities Act.

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Tarzana, said he did not hear any new proposals from the president and is not sure the speech did anything to calm the partisan divide.

“There is little going on in Washington that inspires the country,” Sherman said. “America is moving forward because there is more good outside of Washington than there is inside it. … This country is more divided than it has been in my lifetime.”

When it came to education, Chino Valley Unified school board member Andrew Cruz was mostly unimpressed with Obama’s speech, with the exception of his statement on making pre-kindergarten available to every 4 year old.

“The only thing I was happy about was the pre-K,” Cruz said, shortly before the president finished his speech.

His district currently offers California’s transitional kindergarten, or “TK,” pre-school program at three sites, and Cruz’s own son takes the classes: “I think if it wasn’t for TK, he’d be behind socially and intellectually.”

But he was less pleased with other education issues touched on by the president:

“As an educator, when I look at Common Core,” which Obama alluded to in his speech, but stopped short of directly naming, “there are some absurd things that I notice, things that are not research-based.”

San Bernardino City Unified school board president Mike Gallo was enthusiastic about Obama’s speech, including the president’s explicit emphasis on the value of science, technology, engineering and math education — the STEM curriculum that has been a key focus of many districts across the nation in recent years.

“We might as well be investing our precious resources in having our education system deliver the skills and competencies that employers ultimately need,” Gallo said.

He was also excited that the president once again threw his support behind universal preschool, which takes the shape of transitional kindergarten in California. In San Bernardino City Unified, such classes are currently only available to “hundreds of students,” Gallo said, but he hopes to see the program expand.

“If a kid isn’t reading by grade level by grade three, you never catch up,” he said. “You’ve got to invest, clearly, at the earliest of interventions in their educational experience, otherwise, you’re crippling your kids. It’s a critical piece.”

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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